Presently described are an apparatus and a method for positioning an electronic component and/or a carrier relative to a discharging device. Presently described are, in particular, an apparatus and a method where an electronic component and/or a carrier is/are positioned prior to the electronic component transfer to the carrier.
When transferring electronic components, in particular dies, and, in particular, when transferring singularized electronic components, there exists the general problem that the electronic components are subject to continuous miniaturization, which is why the precision-related requirements become continually more acute when transferring electronic components.
For example, DE 10 2006 027 663 A1 discloses an optical inspection system for measuring electronic components that allows for an inspection of the non-housing-enclosed components prior to them being taken up by an instrumentation head. JP 2009 016455 A discloses an apparatus and a method for capturing the position of a substrate. An example of a transfer device of electronic components from a first carrier to a second carrier is specified in DE 10 2011 017 218 A1.
For example, DE 103 49 847 B3 discloses a positioning apparatus and a positioning method for transferring electronic components. In this, a semiconductor wafer, which is disposed on a carrier film, is disposed above and parallel relative to a band-like substrate. The wafer can be advanced inside the wafer plane by means of a wafer holder and additionally rotated about an axis of rotation that is perpendicular relative to the wafer plane. A discharging device comprises a discharging needle, which acts on the rear of the die that must be detached, and provided is a downward motion whereby the die is detached from the carrier film. The die, which has thus been detached from the carrier film, is thereby placed in a bonding position on the band-like substrate.
The problem that exists here is the fact that the electronic components and the bonding position are hidden from above by the discharging device and the carrier film as well as from below by the substrate. The gap between the carrier film and the substrate is, moreover, in most cases very narrow, such that it is not possible to optically capture the position of the electronic components and the bonding position. Correspondingly, it is not possible to exactly align, meaning precisely position, an individual component and/or the substrate in relation to each other prior to the transfer of the component. Instead, until now, the position of the electronic components prior to the transfer has been captured outside of the device, with the position of the components presumably not changing any more after this point. If the position of a component changes due to the transfer of another component, this can result in an imprecise transfer of a plurality of electronic components onto the substrate.
Since an imprecisely placed electronic component is typically categorized as a faulty part and must therefore be discarded, optimally exact placement of the component is desirable.
An imprecisely transferred component and an imprecisely provided substrate will result in the faulty placement of a component.